President Barack Obama and Cuban counterpart Raul Castro will have an "interaction" when they attend next week's Summit of the Americas in Panama, a U.S. official said Friday.

It will be the first between the two leaders since the historic rapprochement between Havana and Washington.

The death toll from floods devastating northern Chile has risen by one to at least 24, officials said Wednesday, as President Michelle Bachelet cancelled a trip to a regional summit to cope with the crisis.

Another 69 people, up by 12 from the last tally, remain missing, the National Emergency Office said.

U.S. and Cuban officials held a brief technical-level meeting Tuesday to define an agenda for future sessions on human rights as part of the rapprochement between the long-time adversaries, a Cuban source said.

The source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, provided no details on the substance of the talks.

The United States and Cuba will hold talks on human rights, one of the most delicate issues pending in their historic rapprochement, on Tuesday in Washington, Havana said.

The "bilateral dialogue on human rights... demonstrates Cuba's readiness to address any issue despite our differences," the deputy director of the Cuban foreign ministry, Pedro Luis Pedroso Cuesta, told journalists Thursday.

Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida could visit Cuba next month, a report said Thursday, becoming one of the highest-profile visitors to the isolated island since a thaw began between Washington and Havana.

If the visit goes ahead, Kishida is expected to call for closer ties with Cuba, where Japanese companies can invest in infrastructure projects and mineral resource development, Japan's public broadcaster NHK said.

The European Union and Cuba have agreed to speed up the pace of normalizing ties and hope to reach an accord by the end of the year, the bloc's top diplomat said Tuesday.

Federica Mogherini, the highest ranking EU official ever to visit Cuba, said the fact that she traveled to Havana so soon after taking up the foreign policy chief job on November 1 showed how important the relationship was.

Russia and Cuba worked on their joint strategy against the U.S. economic embargo on the communist island Tuesday, during a visit by Moscow's Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

Lavrov, the first Russian cabinet member to visit Cuba since Washington and Havana announced they would set aside their Cold War enmity and renew diplomatic ties, met President Raul Castro at the start of a four-country Latin American tour.

The European Union's chief diplomat, Federica Mogherini, visited Cuba Tuesday to give impetus to negotiations on normalizing relations between Brussels and Havana.

On her arrival late Monday, Mogherini said she had come to "advance" the negotiations on an agreement of political dialogue and cooperation, the official news website Cubadebate said.

EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini arrived in Cuba on Monday for crucial talks aimed at normalizing ties between the European Union and the communist island state.

The visit comes as previously icy relations between Cuba and the West are thawing, following the dramatic rapprochement between Havana and Washington in the last few months.

EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini arrives in Cuba on Monday in a bid to spur delicately balanced talks aimed at normalizing ties with the communist island state.

The visit comes as previously icy relations between Cuba and the West are thawing, following the dramatic rapprochement between Havana and Washington in the last few months.